Becoming Emptiness
by Heimeldat
Summary: A brief summary of Ulquiorra's existence, from his death as a human to his death as an Espada.


I don't know why Ulquiorra's story came into my head. He's never been one of my favourites; he's too angsty for my taste. But he's interesting, I suppose.

**Becoming Emptiness**

He watched his own funeral. None of his friends came. He stared at the bare lawn around the grave and felt cold. Hadn't he left anything behind after twenty-six years? All that time, and nobody cared that he was dead. So, his life had been meaningless. He felt like a shell, here for no reason. Why was his spirit still conscious? He should have simply ceased to exist.

His mother was there, but her face was empty of grief. When he saw her so calm and uncaring, it made his chest ache as if teeth gnawed his flesh. She hadn't spoken to him in eight years. Had she never cared about him?

The woman he loved, the woman who shot him through the throat and left him in the street, did not come. He wished he could see her again. But maybe it was better this way. He understood now that their love had been empty, too. She wouldn't have killed him if their time together meant anything.

He stood there beside his grave for a long time. There was no reason to go anywhere else. After a while – days, he thought – he started walking. He didn't grow tired or hungry. He wandered the streets and saw nothing.

He looked up from the pavement and found himself outside her house. His feet had brought him here out of habit, nothing more, but now that he was here, he wanted to see her. He went inside. He didn't need doors any more. For another long time – maybe days, maybe weeks – he sat against the wall and watched her. Nobody knew that she was the one who killed him. Or maybe nobody cared.

She had another man already. Every time he saw them come home together, he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pain carving into his chest. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend for a while that nothing existed. But it didn't work for long. He could block out the sights and sounds, but the ache wouldn't go away.

Maybe he should kill her. He wasn't angry, not really. His life had been meaningless, after all, right? What difference did it make if he was dead or alive? But maybe there was some way to end this pointless existence. He remembered stories about ghosts needing revenge before they could rest in peace. Maybe if he killed her, he could fade away.

The pain grew until he couldn't bear it. Closing his eyes didn't help at all any more. He couldn't escape from himself. He dug his fingers into his own chest and screamed.

For a moment he thought it was over. He felt himself breaking apart, dissolving into nothingness – but then he was back, and the pain with him. It hurt so much, like the hole she shot through him, but a thousand times worse. It ripped out his insides and left him hollow, as empty as the life he had led.

He couldn't bear it any more. He couldn't think clearly through the agony. She came home with her new man, and he lashed out at both of them. He ate them before he knew what he was doing. He had to do something, anything, to fill himself up.

When they were gone, he felt better. The pain wasn't any less, but he felt stronger now, more able to bear it. He didn't feel quite as empty.

But that didn't last long. Soon he was hungry again, more empty than ever. He wondered if he had turned into a black hole, sucking things in but never full. He went out and wandered the streets again. Eating people didn't seem disgusting. He wanted more. He smelled a strong soul, one that would let him bear the pain for a long time, and he devoured it.

Life – if this was life – still had no purpose. He retreated to the world of shadows, crawling with hordes of others like himself, but he never stayed there long. He kept returning to the world of the living, again and again. No matter how many souls he ate, he was never full.

He met a Shinigami one day. He had heard about them from the others. They said the Shinigami were strong. This one wasn't. He sucked her into himself and felt stronger than he had ever felt before. With this sort of strength, dozens of times better than an ordinary human, maybe he could finally satisfy the biting hunger.

Other souls tasted weak and bitter after that day. He craved something better. Next time he smelled a Shinigami, he rushed toward the scent. Another Hollow got there before him. No! He couldn't bear to miss this chance. He flung himself desperately at the other Hollow, dragged it away from the Shinigami, ripped into it with his teeth.

And it tasted good, even better than the Shinigami. He felt a rush of power as if he had eaten dozens of humans all at once, and more than that, he felt the mind and soul of the other Hollow flood into him as well. The other Hollow had been a little girl, abandoned by her parents. She was lonely and scared, so now he was too.

He screamed and fled to the shadow world. The other Hollow was still alive inside him, all her memories and thoughts. His pain had doubled. But his power had more than doubled. If he could keep doing this, he might actually become stronger than the pain, take control of it instead of being driven by it.

He stopped rushing to catch tasty souls. He took his time, let other Hollows eat the humans, and then leapt out at them and swallowed them whole. Then he stopped bothering with the human souls at all. He stayed in the shadow world and chased the swarms of Hollows that had gone almost mindless with rage and fear and hatred.

After the first few dozen, his mind whirled with other people's thoughts. Sometimes he wasn't sure which part of them was him. But that was good. If he ate more and more, maybe their thoughts and memories would fill him up.

After a hundred, they couldn't think straight. There were too many of them in one body, and they didn't know where one ended and the next began. But they knew they were hollow and hungry, so they kept eating.

After that, they were too tangled in each other's minds to think at all. They couldn't hold their form. They spilled out and bloated into a huge shape that swayed aimlessly to and fro because they couldn't find enough organised thoughts to move in any direction. Vaguely they remembered that their existence was meaningless, so it didn't matter. When orders came from outside, they obeyed. When no orders came, they did nothing.

Their minds started breaking down into fragments. Time passed, and the pieces of mind sifted and settled themselves. Billions of memories blurred together into a body of regret. Anger and hatred and resentment crystallised into an iron skin. The strongest fragments recombined into something resembling a new mind. The most enduring sensations of its old lives drifted to the top, and it learned that it was a being without purpose, an empty shell formed of nothing but pain and bitterness crusted together into a new personality.

He was the condensation and distilment of hundreds of tormented souls, and logic told him a creature like that shouldn't be able to exist. But here he was, so he accepted the evidence of his own senses. He became conscious of his bloated form, and drew back into himself. He created a new form, smaller and harder, incredibly dense with layer upon layer of compressed spiritual power. But it was still only a shell.

He ran through the shadow world and devoured everything he touched. He forced more substance into his body without permitting it to grow larger. But no matter how tightly he compacted himself, the hollow space inside refused to be filled.

Finally, he had no choice but to embrace the pain. He accepted his own meaninglessness, and his mind sharpened. He had become one with the emptiness and pain at the core of his being. He was nothing. He felt nothing. He had nothing. Therefore he had nothing to lose, and that was good. He opened his eyes and found himself in the bottom of a dark pit, as if the darkness had pressed him together into this new form. He began to walk.

He walked alone, and for a long time he walked. Sight was his only sense; he understood that if he could not see a thing, it had no existence. But the things he saw meant nothing, anyway. He was emptiness, so meaning slipped through his mind and away again to leave him as void as before.

One time he saw a Shinigami walking in the world of shadows, and Hollows bowed before him like a king. Logic demanded an explanation. He followed and watched as the Shinigami came and went. He followed as the Shinigami cut apart Hollows and pasted them back together. He watched as the Shinigami twisted and wove and layered Hollows into new things.

He was there when the Shinigami created a strange black Hollow and filled its hole. That Hollow never returned, but he remembered. The Shinigami had filled its emptiness.

Next time, he knelt before the Shinigami and held up his hands. He had no mouth, so he couldn't ask in words. He had no ears, so he couldn't hear the answer. But he saw the Shinigami smile and nod, and he knew he would not be emptiness forever.

A long time passed before the answer came. It was small and bright, and would have had no meaning, except that it came in the Shinigami's hand. He didn't understand how it worked, but that didn't matter.

When his mask shattered, he thought he had become perfect. He was the void incarnate. All that remained was logic, cold and pure and empty. The Shinigami had not filled him, but why should he become full? He was nothing, so logically he needed nothing.

Yet he remained curious. It was not longing. He contained no such sensation. It was only a logical desire to understand his opposite. He put his hand in the holes of Hollows, to know if their emptiness was the same as his. He put his hand in the chests of humans, to know what made them full. But wholeness and emptiness – the core of his own existence, and of humans – seemed to defy logic.

At the end, he thought he glimpsed for an instant what logic had never found. But it was too late now to understand. Perhaps it was better this way. His existence was hollow from the start. How fitting, to fade away and become nothing.


End file.
